And our survey said…efficiency is the key to delivering the insurance family’s fortunes

I read with interest the article in POST (Insurers recognise need for efficiency, 9 June). Whilst this may be perceived in some quarters as earth-shattering news, I have been commenting on these issues for what feels like a long time now.

The EDM Group found 38% of insurance executives said ‘significant opportunities’ existed for insurers to improve efficiency. Good news: it appears more insurers now recognise the issue. With 33% of customers reportedly switching insurers because of poor service, they need to. Could you afford to lose this many customers, when with the help of the right technology, they can not only be retained but the customer journey enhanced and your relationships with them developed and improved?

When we speak to prospective clients, they all recognise the benefits greater efficiency, process automation and ‘management by exception’ can bring, but the ‘customer journey’ has historically been a much harder sell. Those who dismissed it as window dressing and a nice bit of marketing with negligible impact on business, couldn’t have been more wrong.

Intuitive software is delivering efficiency and cutting costs for our clients and has been doing so for almost a decade. It does not need any new hardware or costly cap-ex to get up and running. The pet insurance sector has started to sniff out the advantages and it looks like the mainstream insurance industry is coming around to the same view. Survey said nearly half of insurers would improve efficiency over the next three to five years. The question is, will it be too late to deliver a change in the insurance family’s fortunes?